Jay Harvey Upstage

 Joe Henderson came out of Lima, Ohio, with an evident curiosity and receptivity to anything he could do on his tenor saxophone. He went from the northwestern Ohio city to the regional jazz mecca of Detroit, where he studied music at Wayne State University and began honing his professional associations. He never drew in the artistic boundaries close to what he was used to. There was always some new way of reaching out beyond his hard-bop roots. Joe Henderson in the '70s In one of producer Zev Feldman' s most illuminating presentations of live club dates by modern masters of the music, we get an extended exposure to what Henderson was like in the welcoming environment of Chicago's Jazz Showcase. The engagement came in February 1978 with a bassist (Steve Rodby) and drummer (Danny Spencer) well known in the venue. The quartet was boosted by the burgeoning eminence by a rising star at the piano, Joanne Brackeen.  "Consonance" is the two-disc set available to the worl...

More evidence came forward this weekend of Jun Märkl's knack for programming, though more wasn't required. The music director's long view of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's classical season rests on the firm support of each program's integrity and balance. In macro and micro terms alike, he's got a fine track record.  The newly popular late-afternoon time of each weekend's concluding concert is proving popular, as I found out firsthand Saturday when the orchestra played music by Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saens and Fauré. Three of the five works allowed four principals to speak musically with a French accent. Märkl thus underlined his sensitivity to French distinctiveness with the same insight and radiance that he has long lent to the Austro-German mainstream. Painter in sound: Claude Debussy Especially revelatory was the sole piece after intermission, Debussy's  suite "Images," which slowly cohered from separate tone pictures that illustrate ...

New staging: Vamp and title character in 'An American in Paris' Rediscovery of the alchemical result of dance and live music together is especially welcome in the fourth collaboration of Dance Kaleidoscope and the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra . Opening night of "American Sound" Friday certified the partnership's strength once again at Schrott Center for the Arts. The national theme includes a couple of pieces set to American music with the signature styles of the current DK artistic director, Joshua Blake Carter, and his predecessor, David Hochoy, making welcome returns in the company's schedule. The difference is the animating presence of the ICO, conducted with sparkle and precision by its music director, Matthew Kraemer. Yet the real treat was to get further acquaintance with DK rehearsal director  Sean Aaron Carmon  in his new work, "City on Fire." The piece takes its title and the theme behind its movement from the ensemble number signaling ...

Ebene Quartet paid its third visit here with different personnel  In "The Pilgrim's Progress," Mr. Facing Both Ways is an allegorical no-no in the strict Christian terms of someone who cannot resist looking on both the sacred and profane paths forward. This amounted to one of the author John Bunyan's warnings against waywardness. In musical terms, the evidence of a divided consciousness may also be labeled a fault. Yet Claude Debussy succeeded in forging a new musical style that has amazingly found acceptance among music-lovers with conservative tastes for almost a century and a half. Still, innovation is basic to everything he wrote.  My predecessor as music critic for the Michigan newspaper I worked for long ago memorably dismissed  "impressionism" (a term Debussy rejected but continues to adhere to his music) as "the petering-out of well-worn romantic trails."  But such a performance as the Ebene Quartet laid down of the French composer's St...

 The artistic directors of Ronen Chamber Ensemble designed a program this past weekend where they brought in a guest string quartet to nail down a program titled "Americana" firmly in masterpiece territory. Gregory Martin, Alastair Howlett, Jennifer Christen Oboist Jennifer Christen and flutist Alastair Howlett invited Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra colleagues to play Dvorak's "American" Quartet (no. 2 in F major, op. 96) for the second half of concerts at St. Paul's Episcopal Church and the University of Indianapolis. I heard the latter Monday evening after a circuitous drive to the city's south side, thanks to construction along I-65 South. It was worth the extra travel to hear ISO concertmaster Kevin Lin head the guest musicians on the first violin part, with Ziqing Guo on second, Zhanbo Zheng, viola, and CJ Collins, cello.  Lin's leadership, showing his usual connection to the emotional heft of a score on top of technical security, was spectacul...

Residents, stranded passengers reflect on what they've been through.  Disaster generates a leap across barriers of strangeness and reserve in "Come from Away," the final production of Indiana Repertory Theatre 's 2025-26 season. Visited Sunday at the last performance of opening weekend, the award-winning musical  had attracted an audience obviously primed to enjoy an uplifting show.  Its hundred-minute run time requires an extraordinary amount of emotional buy-in. But by now the public comes in already enthralled by the story of how a small town in Newfoundland played generous host to thousands of stranded airline passengers on September 11, 2001. I was well advanced into middle age on that disturbing day, but the audience that "Come from Away" can now attract includes many young people for whom 9/11 takes on the aura of myth.  Like most myths, 9/11 carries a great burden of sorrow. This show touches on that burden often, but the primary emotional payoff is ...